Apple iWatch: is it an iPhone nano on your wrist?

Mark Hattersley |
March 15, 2013

We take a look at the sort of apps and features an iWatch will have, if Apple does release it.

But why would Apple want to kill off the smartphone? Because it controls the iPad market, and people don't need an 4G/LTE iPad or iPad mini and a 4G/LTE-powered iPhone. Apple is controlling the tablet market, but its grasp on the phone market is looking increasingly shaky, You don't need an iPad and iPhone (although owning both is preferable to owning an iPad and feature phone) but you do need to still be able to place calls and receive SMS messages. That's why people who are forced to choose get an iPad can choose a cheap Android phone over an iPhone. It's just to make and receive calls.

Everybody says Apple should make a cheaper iPhone, and perhaps that would help. But Apple doesn't like to just strip things back, it likes to make things different. The iWatch would certainly offer less functionality than an iPhone, but in such a radically different way that it appears to be a step forward, rather than a step back. People who bought iPhones would buy iWatches; they wouldn't buy iPhone nanos.

Is the iWatch the cheaper iPhone nano that everyone's asking about. It would be a typical Apple ballsy move, one that shifts the goalposts while giving people what they really want. A cheaper way to send and receive messages and calls, without cutting in to the app market of the iPhone or the large screen web surfing of the iPad.